Kaolin
by Nearing Midnight
Summary: Aang has trouble focusing, but Toph helps him out.


Aang fidgeted in his seat. At the head of the table, the delegate from Ba Sing Se droned on and on about… something, he wasn't too sure what. Something about trade deals with the Fire Nation, or taxation on crop exports. Maybe both? His thoughts kept sliding around inside his head like sand slipping through fingers, near impossible to grasp. He resisted the urge to tap out his nervous energy on the stone table with his fingers, or bounce his leg up and down, but it was _hard_.

Sitting a little ways down the table, Zuko in full Fire Lord regalia was nodding solemnly, occasionally jotting down notes on the scroll of parchment before him. Aang had no idea how in spirits' name he could stay so _focused_. His own brain couldn't seem to decide whether he desperately wanted to get up and move around or just drop off to sleep.

The meeting-room was stuffy, overly warm, and… well, airless. The buzzard-wasp thrumming beneath Aang's skin reached a fever pitch, and he scratched at his arm and rubbed at the grainy surface of his meditation beads around his neck. No use. He'd rubbed at the wood so often in times like these that most of the texture had already rubbed right off. There was nothing left to keep him grounded, nothing left to keep the very atoms of his body from flying apart and vibrating to pieces at the sheer, maddening stillness of the meeting-room.

Monk Gyatso had understood. He had always understood, even when Aang bounced around during his lessons or got distracted during examinations. It wasn't like Aang hadn't been _trying_, though. He'd tried his _hardest_ to concentrate, to sit still, to be the disciplined obedient student — and later, the grown-up, wise Avatar — that everyone expected him to be. It was just that his brain sometimes wanted to do its own thing and flitted off like a lemur-bat, leaving the rest of him behind. But Monk Gyatso never lost his patience. He always let Aang fiddle with his air marbles when he needed to and didn't force him to sit and read from a scroll if there was a more exciting way of learning the same lesson. Nor did he expect Aang to wait through endless, boring meetings with self-important nobles droning on and on about the influence of their wealthy merchant families, etcetera, etcetera…

But Monk Gyatso wasn't here. Nor were his air marbles, for that matter, or any of the other objects he usually liked to fiddle with. Some Fire Nation noble had made a snide remark about them, once, in a meeting very much like this one. Zuko had rebuked the noble sharply, but that had been the last time Aang had ever dared bring such things into a conference room.

"—Avatar Aang?"

Aang's head shot up. His eyes widened. _Monkey feathers._

Every single person at the table was staring at him expectantly. The Ba Sing Se delegate made a flippant gesture with one hand. "Well?" she asked. "What are your thoughts on the matter, Avatar?"

Aang's heart pounded. There was a sick feeling in his stomach as he opened his mouth. "I—"

An echoing, discordant note suddenly shook the air around them, making everyone jump in their seats. The gong hanging near the doors of the room swung gently back and forth, having clearly just been struck, although there was no sign of _who_ exactly had rung it.

A familiar voice chirped brightly over Aang's shoulder, "Well, would you look at that! It's time for a recess."

When most of the people had left the room to stretch their legs, Aang sagged back against his chair and glanced sideways at the person sitting smugly beside him. "That was you, wasn't it."

"Who else?" Toph scoffed, kicking her feet up on the table. "These dunderheads like the sound of their own voices way too much. I needed a break before I started bashing heads together."

"You can't just call a time-out whenever you feel like it!"

Toph stuck her tongue out at him. "Sure I can. It's nearly lunchtime, anyway."

Aang sighed but stood up from his chair nonetheless, stretching gratefully and finally letting himself bounce slightly on the balls of his feet. Now that the meeting had stopped, his mind was already clearing up, like the sun through clouds. There were loose papers all over the conference table—otherwise Aang would've hopped right onto his air scooter and taken several turns around the room to let out his pent-up energy. Moving both his body _and_ his bending would feel fantastic after sitting in silence for so long…

_Splat._

"Hey!" Aang yelped, staggering backwards as Toph cackled at him. He pawed at the front of his robes for the soft, heavy _something_ that Toph had just launched at his stomach. His fingers closed around a cold, smooth, and… malleable surface?

"Is this _clay?"_

"Sure is." Toph grinned. Aang boggled at her, then at the ball of clay sticking to his hands.

"But it's so… so _slimy_." He looked down at himself and yelped again. "Aw, you stained my robes!"

Toph shrugged. "Just bend it clean. And you should thank me, Twinkletoes – all I had was a piece of stone floor and my cup of water to work with. You're lucky I didn't swipe some diplomat's tea instead."

Aang pouted, but she had a point. With a few quick twitches of his fingers, he banished the bits of mud sticking to his front, then bent the cloth dry. After a moment's thought, he removed the excess water from the clay, too, so it was less sticky mudball and more, well, clay-like. Though no potter worth their salt would ever use clay like this for sculpting, because no matter how satisfyingly it pulled apart in his hands, it wasn't nearly elastic enough to keep the shape of delicate carvings or thin pottery walls…

"Wait." Aang stopped fiddling with the clay. "What do you want me to do with this?"

Toph flapped a hand at him. "Play with it, toss it around, whatever you want. I don't care."

Aang tilted his head. "But… why?"

This made Toph sit up. She didn't give him a Look like Katara might've done, but the way her head turned slightly toward him showed that she was listening intently. "Hey. You don't have your usual things because of that asshole in Sparky's court, right? So I thought you'd like something to help you focus before you _really_ started bouncing off the walls. Clay's tactile and easy to hide—even though you shouldn't have to hide something like that. If anyone tries to give you shit for it, I'll sock 'em. And Sparky'll probably glare them right out of the room."

Aang's fingers had already resumed kneading the clay into round, friendly shapes without him realizing it. The touch of it against his skin was both stimulating and soothing, and its _Earthiness_ tugged satisfyingly at the whispers of his bending. His mind was more settled than it had ever been since this spirits-forsaken conference first began.

Aang stared at the grey blob of clay in his hands, then at his friend. A warm, bubbly feeling rose in his chest, and not even Toph's sudden punch to his arm could drive it away.

"You'd better not be getting sappy on me now, Twinkletoes," she said, scowling.

"I'm not," Aang protested, but he couldn't stop smiling. The bit of clay was a grounding weight in his hand as he sat back in his chair for the rest of the meeting.

* * *

**A/N: This fic was written as a request for user d-naggeluide over on tumblr! The prompt they gave was: "****I've got a drabble prompt for you! Accessibility + not the character you'd expect ;)****"**

**I'm still accepting ATLA prompts on my tumblr blog elimentals. I won't be accepting requests directly from , but feel free to pop over to my tumblr askbox!**

**Thanks for reading :D**


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